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Balanchine & Beyond honors legacy of celebrated choreographer

Company to make its first appearance at the new University of Tulsa Lorton Performance Center this March

TULSA, Okla. – February 25, 2013 – Balanchine & Beyond, presented over two weekends beginning March 15, celebrates the influence of legendary choreographer George Balanchine. Tulsa Ballet dancers will push themselves to technical limits in three challenging and breathtakingly beautiful pieces that have redefined notions of classical movement. The mixed repertory program includes the Oklahoma premiere of Yuri Possokhov’s Classical Symphony, the return of the James Kudelka’s well-received there, below, and George Balanchine’s neo-classical masterpiece, The Four Temperaments. All performances are at The University of Tulsa Lorton Performance Center. This will mark the company’s first performance at the venue.

“Our March triple bill parallels the exuberant energy of spring,” Artistic Director Marcello Angelini said. “We will cap off this ambitious evening with The Four Temperaments, the epic and groundbreaking 1946 work by the legendary George Balanchine.”

Classical Symphony – Oklahoma PremiereChoreography by Yuri Possokhov, Music by Sergei ProkofievOne of the most virtuoso works of the season, Classical Symphony commands attention immediately, as a male soloist leaps into a double turn in the air on Prokofiev’s first note. The rest of the ballet follows suit with striking and peculiar combinations originating from classical movement, but creating an unorthodox modernity to the ballet’s conventional steps.

“Classical Symphony, created for San Francisco Ballet by its resident choreographer Yuri Possokhov, is a neo-classical work of unparalleled beauty and explosive energy. I was at its world premiere, and the audience leapt to their feet when it ended,” Angelini said. “It is probably one the most challenging new works I have seen in the past decade. Yuri uses purely classical technique strongly influenced by contemporary aesthetics. The result is a work as exciting and fresh as spring itself.”

there, belowChoreography by James Kudelka, Music by Ralph Vaughn Williams and Henry PurcellFull of integral movements and unusual partnering, Kudelka sculpts dancers into expressionistic forms, reforming typical steps into inventive shapes with fluid musicality. Audiences will be transfixed on this poetic piece from the very beginning, as the dancers emerge to dance against a striking backdrop of white mist.

“there, below was an instant audience favorite during the 2010/11 season, prompting one of the fastest standing ovations during my time in Tulsa. I can truly say that this piece is back by popular demand,” Angelini said.

The Four TemperamentsChoreography by George Balanchine, Music by Paul HindemithOne of Balanchine’s earliest experimental works, The Four Temperaments is inspired by the medieval belief in the human body’s four “humors” that determined a person’s temperament, which Balanchine translated into the ballet’s four movements – Melancholic, Sanguinic, Phlegmatic and Choleric.

The ballet expresses each temperament in an angular style that inspired Balanchine to continue creating contemporary ballets and became the defining work of the neo-classical style, still lending inspiration to today’s leading choreographers. Renowned dance critic Arlene Croce of The New Yorker called The Four Temperaments “a messianic work, which conveys to this day the sense of a brilliant and bold new understanding.”